**Author details**

230 New Approaches to the Study of Marine Mammals

whaling operations in those waters (Kannada 2006).

(no more than 4 killed in any one year) (Kannada 2006).

**6. Conclusions** 

*Harmony*, of Nantucket, to whale in the Gulf of Paria, for fear of competition (de Verteuil, 1994). It is not known how the Governor decided in this matter. Still some Yankee whaling vessels continued occasionally visiting Trinidad's waters until at least 1867. There are records of Yankee whaling ships visiting Tobago waters during 1877, although it is unclear

Yet, in other places such as SVG, the story was different. Despite the fact that the number of voyages by Yankee whalers these and other surrounding islands was relatively low in comparison to those to Bermuda and Barbados, their cultural influence in undeniable. For example, a SVG resident named William Wallace took interest in whaling and participated as a crewmember on several Yankee whaling expeditions. He later left Bequia and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, the center of the Yankee whaling fleet. While in New Bedford, he learned whaleboat design, tool production and maintenance, and hunting methods. Upon returning to SVG, he applied this new knowledge and began whaling. Whaling represented an opportunity for economic development for men of European ancestry returning to an impoverished island. Thus, the development of the whaling industry in SVG was the result of cultural contacts rather than a direct correlation of intensity of Yankee

The reason why Yankee whalers did not intensively exploit whales in SVG had to do with yield per unit of effort. The efficiency with which Yankee whalers caught whales in SVG was less than ideal: 38.5 % success rate (killing and hauling in). This was probably due to the limitations of the boats, which were rowboats, and the inaccuracy of hand-thrown harpoons. It seems that landing a humpback whale was a difficult task. These same limitations may have played a role in Yankee whaler's choice not to hunt pilot whales unless times were desperate. In contrast to the large, slow moving, and obvious humpback whales; the shortfinned pilot whales are small and quick. Chasing after the smaller and faster pilot whales would have been extremely costly in terms of time and profit potential (Kannada 2006).

Prior to the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling, SVG and the rest of the world for that matter, whaled without regard to depletion issues. Despite a negative correlation between global oil value and the number of humpback whales caught in SVG, it is unlikely that the global market drove the industry. SVG exported oil and meat of humpback whales to neighboring countries in only small quantities. It is more likely that the persistence of the humpback whale fishery in SVG was due to local tradition and local demand for whale products as there are no longer exports of these products outside the country. The SVG market followed the typical supply and demand curve in that as the amount of humpback whale oil became available, the less it cost which lead to a higher demand for the product. Since the late 1930's, there has been little fluctuation in the number of humpback whales killed and that number has remained low

The intensification of Yankee whaling in the Caribbean was due to a combination of factors such as (1) depletion of stock whales in traditional whaling grounds of the North Atlantic

whether or not they actually captured any whales (Reeves and Smith, 2002).

Aldemaro Romero *College of Arts and Sciences, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Peck Hall, Edwardsville, IL, USA* 
